1990s Footnotes =============== **Albums that dropped off during the project** - For some reason it took a really long time for me to be honest about myself in regards to how much I actually like the first albums by **Helmet** and **Recoil**. I guess I liked them back in the day, but they don't hold up today. My Origin Story As A Music Fan ------------------------------ As I wrote out the text to go along with my 1990s favorites I realized that this decade was also the story of how pop music became such an important part of my life. I wanted to capture a somewhat chronological account of the path that led me here, and the most fundamental moments in my developing taste. - **Billy Joel** - Like a lot of people who grew up in the mid-atlantic region in the 80s/90s, Billy Joel played a big part in my life. Many of my earliest memories of pop music revolve around the artist (more about that in the 1980s section), and he was central to my pre-teen listening. By 1991, I had access to most of his catalog across a range of formats (vinyl, tape, CD) in my brother's music collection. This cobbled together assortment became my soundtrack to 6th and 7th grade. The two CD Greatest Hits was the central cannon. Cassette copies of *Songs in the Attic* and *The Nylon Cannon* exposed me to some of my favorite album tracks. I remember repeatedly listening to a recording of a Philadelphia concert that my brothers had taped off of WMMR in the early 80s. My absolute favorite was a cassette dub of my brother's vinyl copy of *Glass Houses*. In some odd way, the artist's attempts at replicating the New Wave sound on that record appealed to my nascent teenage yearnings. My powerful lifelong connection with the song "All for Leyna" dates back to this era. The vinyl record that produced that dub is now a cherished part of my personal vinyl collection. I remember bonding with some of my middle-school friends over a shared interest in the works of William Martin Joel, who at that time was already generally seen as being very, very uncool. Because of my unusual family situation, I often found it difficult to connect with my peers. In the early 90s, in a very specific context, Billy Joel helped me feel a little bit more normal than I usually did. Over the years I have found myself continuing to connect with others over a shared interest in his catalog. He will never be cool, but his pop songwriting has always been first rate. In a way, he taught me to value substance over style. That approach has been fundamental to my listening in the years since. The first CD I ever bought was a fresh copy of my favorite *Songs in the Attic*. That copy now lives in my brother's collection, but it feels so right as the first album to enter my collection. The first rock concert I ever attended was Billy at the Corestates Center in Philadelphia in 1999. The first time I ever remember being excited about a new release coming out was *River of Dreams* in 1993 (see the post about that album for more details). I'm not too cool to admit that Billy is fundamental to my relationship with popular music. - **Paul McCartney/The Beatles** - Sometime around 1992 my brother had purchased a copy of *Tripping the Live Fantastic: Highlights* by **Paul McCartney**. I was initially resistant to what I perceived as old timer music, and he tried to sell it to me as a logical extension of what my hero **Billy Joel** was doing. I didn't realize how ahead of its time that idea was, and today I am one of many fans who sees Billy as the leading disciple of McCartney, and who worked in the same aesthetic space for the entirety of his career. I was a blank slate, and I remember being confused about what songs were **The Beatles**, and which belonged to his solo catalog, and I had no idea what **Wings** even was at this point. In the summer of 1992, I connected with the record, especially the versions of "Hey Jude" and the "Golden Slumbers" medley. In fact, "Golden Slumbers" made such a profound impression on me, that I can vividly recall every detail of the moment where I connected with it. It was a hot, sunny day and I had just taken a very cold shower after an afternoon riding my bike around town trying to cool down in a house with limited air conditioning. I sat in our living room listening on the five disc Pioneer carousel changer that my parents had mated up to their early 80s era Fisher Hi-Fi system. I was eating one of my absolute favorite snacks, an ice cream float made from coke and inexpensive Weis Markets "Carnival" brand vanilla ice cream. I remember getting up to open the magnetic glass door to hit the back button to repeat the track multiple times. I had found something wonderful that sounded like nothing I had ever heard before. The next year my sister would buy the two disc selection of the month from the Columbia House record club: Paul's latest record "Off The Ground" and the hits compilation "All The Best". The compilation made a profound and immediate impact. The one two combination of "Band on the Run" and "Jet" made a very strong case for the merits of his solo career output. I was largely unfamiliar with the content of the album (except the still fairly recent hit "No More Lonely Nights") and I was blown away by the quality of it all. The inner sleeve opens up to reveal a photo collage of every McCartney solo work from the first self titled record through *Press to Play*. I remember looking at that image fascinated by the range of visual styles, and wondering about the sounds behind each of those covers. "Off the Ground" also made a noted, but more subdued impact on me, and I remember listening to the two records one after another on my brothers hi-fi while I played Super Nintendo. The solo side of the equation had checked out, and now I wanted to hear the source material that produced the Beatles tunes that I knew from the McCartney live album that was my point of entry to this world. I really wish I had a record of what order I purchased the Beatles albums in, but I am fairly certain that I started by buying a copy of "Sgt. Pepper" at the CVS Pharmacy at the Fairgrounds Square Mall in Reading Pennsylvania. I remember that the record was 13 dollars, which was a significant figure, since my brother had a personal policy of never paying more than 10 bucks for a CD. That was certainly the album that pulled me in and made me a fan for life. It is fitting since it is probably the most McCartney-centric of their classic albums. It would set me on a path of gradually acquiring their entire backlog and almost studying it as I went. A year or so later (circa 1994) I would also start exploring the music behind those album covers I saw inside the "All the Best" liner note booklet. Those more obscure McCartney solo releases would require me to travel to the outskirts of Philadelphia to visit the expanded collection of Tower Records, a store that would be essential as my taste and record collection expanded in my teen years. In many ways, we the 90s teens were the second Beatles generation. So many of my friends were also deeply into their work and it became a way that I bonded with many of the friends I made in middle school. I even had a friend that shared my intense interest in the Paul McCartney deep cuts, including albums that were borderline hated in those days like *Back to the Egg* and some that are still panned today like "Press to Play". The whole thing culminated in the release of the *Beatles Anthology* documentary and archival compilation CDs. The peak of my personal Beatlemania coincided with a second wave of their dominance of popular culture, and synced up perfectly with the culmination of my adolescent years. In 1997, I used the larval world wide web to access a site called "The Flaming Pie Gazette" to read about the recording and promotion of McCartney's upcoming album. I had gone on a fairly extensive musical adventure in the cycle between his studio releases. One that would have a profound effect on my taste in music throughout my life. - **Mid-90s Alt Rock** - It wasn't all Beatlemania for me in the mid-90s, and I often would listen to the local classic rock radio station, 91.4 WYSP. In 1994 they would change format to the popular alternative hard rock of the day. I was upset about the change, and was highly resistant to most of the music that my middle-school peers were listening to by the artists of that day. This was also around the time when 91.4 started broadcasting the home games by my beloved Philadelphia Eagles. They played commercial bumpers that included snippets of the music that made up their typical programming (I'll always associate "Machinehead" by **Bush** and "Long Way Down" by **The Goo Goo Dolls** with Randall Cunningham, Eric Allen and the other stars of the day) and I slowly became interested in these harder rocking sounds. I had become curious about all of the mysteriously named bands that were being talked about at school, and my teenage brain was becoming enticed by the sense of danger that they presented. WYSP would introduce me to many artists that I still enjoy to this day: **Pearl Jam**, **Smashing Pumpkins**, **Nirvana**, **Stone Temple Pilots**, and **Soundgarden** appeared almost hourly on the playlist and there was little time for acts beyond the core group. That said, for some reason WYSP would also be where I would learn about one of my all-time favorites, **Morrissey** when they played the somewhat off format track: "The More You Ignore Me, the Closer I Get". This modern rock led me back to MTV for the first time since my early days with cable in the late 80s. It was there that I would become interested in the latest groups like **Green Day** and the latest British import **Oasis**. While I'm no longer a big fan of their work, those 90s English rock titans would be my window into the world of BritPop, which would be highly influential on my listening for the next decade. For a while I actually fell in with a group of middle-schoolers who liked to listen to British music, use British slang, and generally engage in Anglophile behavior. I remember one of them showed me a copy of **The Stone Roses** debut record, which at the time, was a very obscure album in 1990s America. I would succeed in getting my sister to buy into a few of these artists, but generally speaking this was music I wasn't really allowed to listen to. It would be some years before new technologies, and the freedom of my own money would allow me to properly explore the alternative rock albums contemporary to my teen years. As the years went by, it became more obvious how influenced many of these 90s alt-rockers were by my favorite artist at the time, the Fab 4. We were the second Beatles generation, not only because of those classic 60s albums, but also the wave of 90s artists like **Chris Cornell** and **Kurt Cobaine** who clearly were building directly on top of them. - **David Bowie** - In 1996 my brother purchased a new laptop computer. It was the first PC that I had regular access to that had a CD-ROM drive. It came with several CD software packages including the now legendary Encarta '95. The digital encyclopedia provided access to a wide range of information that in retrospect was almost a bite size preview of what we soon would be able to access on the nascent web. I remember being fascinated by an encyclopedia that went far beyond the sterile volumes of the World Book and Britannica, and covered topics that felt downright hip and modern. I was particularly interested in the article on rock music. It contained an interest survey of popular music artists that touched on some of my favorites, and most prominently featured David Bowie. Bowie was someone that I had general awareness of. I knew his role in the Jim Henson film Labyrinth, and I remembered his 1993 single "Jump" playing repeatedly on VH1 in the summer of that year. I didn't really have a high opinion of his work, but the 30 second snippet of the song "Changes" featured in that Encarta article about Rock Music changed all that in a moment. It faded in, featured the first chorus of the song (chachacha...changes) and faded out as we reached the instrumental break before next verse (...but I can't trace time). It was mysterious, wonderful, and unlike anything I had ever heard before. The Rock Music article linked to a short article about the man himself, and I was blown away by the idea of an encyclopedia article about a living popular musician. I remember the article mentioning that he had developed and portrayed personas including Ziggy Stardust and the Thin White Duke. I remember discussion of his collaboration with artists like **Mark Bolan** and **Iggy Pop**. I remember that it claimed he was a primary influence on **Brian Ferry** and **Brian Eno** (is that true?). There was a picture of him sitting on a swing, which I now know to be part of the elaborate stage setup for the mid-80s Glass Spider Tour. There was discussion of his role of merging rock music with high fashion, and his androgynous image. Some of this felt quite edgy and dangerous, yet appealing to a young person who was already starting to question the conventions of gender and the related cultural pressures. I probably listened to that 30 second clip of "Changes", yet Bowie still felt very out of bounds and inaccessible to me. Interestingly it was once again WYSP that expanded my horizons, when they reverted their format to classic rock later that year. It was there that I would hear the song "Changes" in its entirety for the first time. Hearing the song in whole, my impression was of a much more conventional and even somewhat quaintly old fashioned tune. During my next visit to the mall, I would dig in the B bin at The Wall where I would find a copy of the compilation *ChangesBowie*. It had an interesting track list that piqued my interest, but I was intimated by the collage of photographs on the front cover showing Bowie in all his various images during the years covered by the collection. Shortly after, I would find a two disc singles collection on offer in the pages of the BMG Music Club brochure. It would become my point of entry to the David Bowie catalog and the launch point for my journey with my favorite artist of all time. Four very notable things would occur in the summer of 1997. First, my brother and sister would both move out, and as a result I would find myself exploring my own individual tastes in things like music, less influenced by my older siblings. Second, I would get my first summer job, leading to my own funds to buy things like my own CDs, and my own Hi-Fi to replace the one that left with my brother. Third, my dad decided to subscribe to American Online which brought a world of information much larger than Encarta '95 to our family computer. Fourth and least exciting, I would break my ankle in Late July finding myself with little to do, other than listen to my music and research it on the web at 33kbps. I remember after I got out of surgery to repair my ankle, lying down on my bed and asking family to put on the album *Space Oddity* which I had recently purchased to expand my Bowie collection. It was a perfect fit for that state of mind. Two of my earliest internet memories are related to Bowie and date to that summer of '97. First: I remember frequenting a fan site called "Teenage Wildlife" (named after a song on "Aladdin Sane" I would not hear until years later). They had a page for every Bowie song that included the lyrics and notes/trivia. Users could leave their own comments about the song, and the whole thing felt so futuristic at the time. I remember looking up a deep track from *Hunky Dory* (my favorite album of all time at that point) called "Quicksand". The only comment on the song page was from a gentleman from India, and I was blown away that I was having this connection over a semi-obscure song with someone on the other side of the world. The early internet was so positive and exciting. Second: the first video I ever played off of the internet (well...the video I played as well as you could in those dial up days) was the video to the new Bowie track "Little Wonder" which had been posted to his official web page. Bowie was an early adopter of the web, and a major advocate for the technology. Technology and David Bowie were apparently a powerful combination in my life, and technology was only just starting to influence and enhance my relationship with music. - **Tori Amos** - She was the last artist that I discovered the old fashioned way. In early 2008 I saw a trailer for the film "Great Expectations" and I was very excited about the chill bit of electronic pop that it featured. Later that day I had a trip planned into the city to do an interview for a scholarship I was pursing at Drexel University. On the way, I stopped off at the Bradlee's department store in the Coventry Mall and found a copy of the newly released soundtrack album. I remember looking at the track-list and wondering if it was Tori Amos who was responsible for the song of interest. I popped the disk into the portable Sony discman that I used in my car and realized that Tori's contribution "Siren", was not the song in question, but was something very different and wonderful. That mysterious bit of a piano rock on one of the last great soundtrack albums was my my introduction to her work, but it didn't immediately make me dig further. In the physical media era, exploration of music and the body of work of a newly discovered artist moved slowly due to access and expense. A few months later, on the first nice day of the spring, I was washing my purple 1997 Dodge Neon in my brother's driveway. I was spending a lot of time at his house my senior year in high school, and I would soon move there to attend my first two years of college at the Penn State Berks campus. A song came on the radio that was the lead single from Tori's upcoming album. That song "Spark" was in a similar art rock vein to what I had heard on "Siren" but managed to be quite a bit harder rocking, while still quite melodic and beautiful. I would purchase the album *From the Choirgirl Hotel* soon after its release the following month. It immediately became one of my favorite albums, and remains so to this day. I thought back to the music video for "Silent All These Years" I had seen on VH1 years prior (see 1992/*Little Earthquakes* for that story) and decided to try out her debut record next. It was a stunning album, filled with deeply personal, yet poetically abstract piano art-rock. By this point, I was very aware of the famous fan page "A Dent in the Tori Amos Universe" which stepped me through the very personal accounts of other fan's journeys through the Tori Amos catalog. By the end of my freshman year in college I owned not only her first four LPs, but also various singles and EPs that contained essential B-sides and deep tracks that were often some of her strongest work. Tori was the ultimate cult artist, and her prolific, high quality output rewarded the effort of seeking out this music. This felt like the kind of deep, artistic music that I should be listening to as a college student, and I was proud to project my fandom as a part of my personal image. When visiting one of my friends in the dorms at school, I would come across the first other Tori fan in the real world. That fan, named Scott, had the exact same Tori poster that I had purchased at the campus fall poster sale, however his was in a massive wall filling size. I remember us talking about our favorite deep cuts, and him explaining to me how we were unusual since her fanbase was 90% female. I had a general sense of this from my exposure to "The Dent" and other online resources, but I really didn't care, as I already was OK with going against the conventions of gender Expectations. It was almost a default position of much of the art I enjoyed. Tori would release her fifth album "To Venus and Back" towards the start of my Sophomore year at Penn State Berks. I remember going to the local record shops to pick up the 3-4 lead singles that would come out before the full length. I have a very specific memory of buying the "1000 Oceans" single at Borders, unwrapping it in the parking lot as I walked to my car, shoving it into the in dash CD player I had recently installed in my car, and listening as I rushed back for my afternoon classes. I was a bit shocked by how conventionally sweet and heartfelt the song was, but it worked perfectly as the closing track for the studio half of the album that would finally release on September 21, 1999. (Interestingly two other of my favorites would release on that same day *The Fragile* by **Nine Inch Nails** and *Euphoria Mourning* by **Chris Cornell**). That cycle between her fourth and fifth full length records would perhaps be the most intense study and exploration of an artist that I would ever undertake. It was also the last time that old fashioned tools like the radio, soundtrack compilations, and word of mouth would play a primary role in the process. In the middle of that year, my Toriphile friend Scott clued me in on how I could get access to Tori's super secret first album *Y Kant Tori Read*. I had seen it discussed on a VH1 clip show as an embarrassing over-reach for commercial success in the late 80s. Tori fans, much like Scott were able to look past the 80s gloss and see the first indications of the greatness to come. He told me to go to the local independent record shop and ask them if they could get me "The Tori album where she has the sword on the front". When I went to the shop later that day to do exactly that, I realized I was asking for a bootleg product. A few days later they called me in and I was presented with a clearly somewhat amateur product on a CD-recordable with printer paper cutouts for liner notes. I always wondered if they made the copy themselves. That CD-R introduced me a fun record that also now sits among my favorites and included yet more outstanding Tori rarities as bonus tracks. That visit to Record Revolution also introduced me to two additional concepts: the joy of shopping at funky, hand-crafted independent record shops and the fact that you could still buy vinyl records of new releases. They were only being made in small numbers, mostly for independent shops like Record Revolution, but I saw 12 inch LP releases of Tori's first three albums, and various other records of the day. For the first time I remember thinking how fun it would be to have my favorite records on the format to really savour as I listened. - **The First 400** - In the summer of 1997 I used some of my first wages to purchase my first hifi. It was comprised of a Kenwood tuner/amplifier, a pair of Bose 201 bookshelf speakers and a 200 disc mega-carousel CD changer. By this time I probably owned nearly 100 discs, but it felt like a lot of space to expand. I was in love with the concept of having all my music available to me at all times, and it felt like the next level beyond the 6 disc cartridge changer my siblings used to manage their collections. Thanks to my first jobs and the BMG/Columbia House record clubs, it didn't take long for me to fill that first player and buy a second that I placed on my increasingly impressive hifi stack. I always wondered how long this would go on, and if someday I would have a whole closet filled with these things. It wouldn't take long for the financial impacts of college and changing technology to render this whole system obsolete. But for a while I lived in what I look back on as the first 400 era. It was always a bit of a struggle to keep track of what CD was where, and to keep everything in an order that I was satisfied with. From the first iteration, the changer sequence started with the Beatles albums in order and then the Beatles solo records I had, then other major classic rock artists. The second changer arrived around the time I started to buy more modern music, and it became an arbitrary split between classic rock in changer 1, and modern rock in changer 2. I used to have "bump days" when I would insert new releases in the appropriate place, and rearrange all the other discs to make room. I kept a Microsoft Access database of each disc and its current location to support the reorganization efforts, and to facilitate "pulls" when I would refresh the contents of the leather CD wallet that I kept in my car. Eventually that DB file would be transformed into a more flexible Excel workbook, and eventually the Google sheet I have today. My collection would later overflow those two changers, and I would simply list discs (or downloads) as I would acquire them. What this means is that I know the order I bought all my CDs in from about 2001 to 2011, but I do not know the exact sequence in which I purchased that first 400. In a way, the first 400 are almost like some sort of fundamental personal music cannon. My collection hovered just below and above 400 discs for a fairly long period between the years of 2000 and 2025, mostly due to changing finances and technology, but also somewhat because of the bounding limitations of my hi-fi setup. It was in the summer of 2021 that I would buy the first albums that went beyond the capacity of those changers. I remember keeping them in somewhat chaotic stacks behind the couch in my room on the second floor of my brothers house. I was mostly living apart from my changers in State College at that point, and the era of the first 400 was over. That said, it leaves behind a canonical sequence that almost feels like a biblical account of my early listening. Changer 1 starts with the big artists: **The Beatles**, **Paul** solo, **John** solo, **George** solo, **Ringo**, **Simon & Garfunkel**, **Billy Joel**, **Tom Petty**, **Asia**, **David Bowie**, **Pink Floyd**, **Led Zeppelin**, **Def Leppard**, and **CSN(&Y)**. Then we have a sequence of "classic rock era" greatest hits and best of compilations. Changer 1 continues with a sequence of artists that I had only recently started to explore: **Steely Dan**, **Supertramp**, **Van Halen**, **The Who**, and **Yes**. The conclusion of changer 1 was the odd sequence of *Harvest* by **Neil Young**, **The Zombies** *Greatest Hits*, and a two disc 70s greatest hits album. Changer 2 starts with **Tori**, and then an alphabetical sequence of more modern artists (e.g. **Alice in Chains**, **Fiona Apple**, **Bush** to **Suzanne Vega**, **The Wallflowers**, and **Weezer**.). The split between changer 1 and 2 is somewhat arbitrary, and the oddest inclusion in the "modern rock" changer would have to be 70s prog rock giants **Camel** and **Gong**. At the end of changer two is my collection of soundtrack albums, and my handful of classical compilations. The first album to not get a home in the changers was *Run With the Pack* by **Bad Company**. When I left for the fall semester in the late summer of 2021, I did a "pull" of CDs using my printed out report of the collection catalog, and I remember looking at the changers and the growing pile of new purchases sitting in their jewel packs. I remember wondering where this was all going to go in the years ahead. The truth was that technology had already provided the answer. - **MP3 Sharing and Napster** - When my dad brought AOL into our house, one of the first things I used the internet to research was pop music. I remember going to a **Billy Joel** fan site that offered MIDI file downloads of many of his most notable tracks. These files were approximate reproductions of popular songs that used only a MIDI sequencer and instrument samples to produce a fully instrumental, musak like experience. I was pretty impressed by this rudimentary form of music at the time, and it offered me a way to listen to music on my computer, and hear songs that I didn't own in a more proper form. There was a good year or so when I was collecting MIDIs from artist specific fan pages, and the more comprehensive collection on the site "Vikram's Midi-Fest". Over time I started to appreciate the performances as an art form in itself. I appreciated the ability of the amateur musicians who were creating some pretty impressive versions of these songs using fairly limited tools. That said, I would completely loose interest in my MIDI collection when I encountered a new technology towards the end of my senior year in High School, the MP3 file. One of my friends started posting FTP links on his personal website of low bitrate MP3 files. He also linked to a more substantial collection hosted by one of our classmates (ironically someone I didn't get along with very well) that included many of the modern rock artists (**Soundgarden**, **Nirvana**, **Nine Inch Nails**) that my parents would have been very unhappy for me to bring home from the record store. I learned how to use an FTP client to make more direct simultaneous downloads, a skill that would serve me well in the next phase of this journey. I dabbled in MP3s for the next year or so, but it wasn't until I got my first taste of higher bandwidth in the freshman dorms that I could accelerate the process. On dial up it would take the better part of an hour download a single track at a somewhat decent bitrate. One of my college friends lived in the Berks dorms and I asked to borrow his connection and offered to show him a path to unlimited music exploration. In those days, there were websites that listed FTP sites with login information where you could browse and sample other users collections. Some of the sites had an upload vs download requirement that meant you had to give them something to get something. They would post text files of requests for what they were looking for. It was such a quaint start to what was about to happen on a much larger scale. My process at this time was to run an FTP client on a zip disc where I could save 90ish or so MB of new files. I couldn't host my own site from there, but I did keep a small collection of some of my more desirable/rare tracks to share back. The whole thing felt like a bunch of music fans sharing and exploring together, and there wasn't any indication of the reckless piracy that would soon follow. It was also during that trip to the dorms that I realized that I didn't have to go out on the open internet to find much of what I was after. The dorm residents were sharing an extensive collection of tracks on the local network. This was how I met my Toriphile friend Scott, when I realized that he had a significant collection of Tori rarities on offer. I still have some of these files today as my only copy of some of her rarer tracks and my only remaining downloads from the MP3 sharing era. The fall of my Sophomore year, my friend Tony would introduce me to a whole new way to use that zip disc. We would sit in the last row of the engineering computer lab and run a portable Napster client uploading and downloading tracks to the most massive and diverse collection of music the world had seen to date. I continue to believe that the fundamental reason that Napster happened was a desire for accessability, not a desire to steal. MP3 files provided rapid access to wide range of music that went well beyond what we could hear on the radio, or find and Best Buy. The files were easy to share with your friends, and play on your PC, the consumption device those of us of college age were mostly spending time in front of. It was the slow roll out of competing commercial paths to music downloads that created the rampant piracy that would follow. For me, downloading was mostly a path to music exploration, and I would want to buy the CD copies of my favorites to hear the whole work at the highest possible quality level. I would follow the winding path after the Napster shutdown to sites like KaZaA, WinMx, and Limewire. WinMx is something that I remember especially fondly since it tended to cater to connoisseurs like myself who were interested in full album downloads of more obscure artists. In the short term I do think that it did slow down my purchasing, particularly those purchases where I was taking a chance on music that I wasn't completely sure about. It would be around this time that sites like CDnow would provide short RealAudio snippets that would be the first steps towards accessibility and empowering the consumer to make more informed purchases. As these capabilities would roll out simultaneous to ubiquitous broadband access early in the next millennium, my interest in MP3 sharing would erode greatly. That said, I have no doubt that the access to a broad range of music provided by Napster and its descendants would greatly expand my musical horizons and turn me into the music super-consumer that I would be in the decade to come. That said, the beginning of the digital music era also started the profound transformation of how I engaged and consumed music. I was hearing more things more quickly, and there wasn't that motivation to try to engage with the physical item I had acquired. I felt like I had performed deep study of the majority of the discs in that first 400 of my collection, but now I wasn't always taking the time to dive that deep. I also didn't have the physical record of my exploration. It would become clear that I was going to need to extend effort to record and remember that journey. A quarter century after that big shift in my listening, I am using this site as a place to keep track of my listening and preferences. For me, the process of exploring and consuming music is as important as the favorites I discover, and why I am taking the time to create this archive. I am the curator of my own musical history, and I want to have some record of that curation process as it becomes less tangible. What Else was I Listening To? ----------------------------- - **VH1** - In the early 90s, MTV was well on its way to not being a channel that played music videos. I remember being excited when we would vacation at the Maryland Shore and I could actually watch videos on the newer VH1 channel. At this time, they were still targeting a more "adult contemporary" audience, but I was happy for anything I could get. The early 90s were a high point for this kind of soft rock music, and I was OK with most of it (except Michael Bolton, and there was lots of Michael Bolton). Having access to music video television again on our 1991 trip was memorable enough that I can vividly remember the trip when I look over a list of the Billboard top hits from July of that year. Just a short time after, A new channel would appear on our home cable connection with a static announcement that Video Hits One would be joining our lineup. It would become regular viewing for me, particularly during the summer vacation periods before I started working, the years 1992-96. In the late 90s VH1 would too transition away from music video programming, but I also was very in to some of their programming from that period including "Behind The Music" and "Pop Up Video". I'll always have a soft spot in my heart for early 90s soft rock, and I can probably thank VH1 for that. - **Hair Metal** - The genre of music that have most enjoyed in my life that I no longer really care for is probably the hair metal of the late 80s and early 90s. The second concert I ever saw in my life was **Def Leppard**, and in the mid 90s I saw their work among my very favorite. I also really liked bands like **Bon Jovi**, **Poison**, and especially **Guns N Roses**. As my music tastes evolved, I just couldn't see the same value in that relatively simple music. Today I still have a lot of respect for **Def Leppard** as a highly competent nostalgia touring act. **GNR** has had some great singles, but largely their work hasn't held up. As for the rest, I am very happy to leave it in the past. The Record Stores of My Youth ----------------------------- - **Strawberries** - (Pottstown, PA) When I had my first money to spend on music this little shop by the Jamesway department store was the place. The selection was limited, but the prices were low. - **Circuit City** - (Reading/ State College, PA) In the 90s they used CDs as a loss leader, and had many of the most popular new releases for far less than any other store. Their back catalog titles were very limited, but I tried to get everything I could there. - **Downtown Records** - (Pottstown, PA) My introduction to independent record stores. I remember traveling to this funky little shop on High Street Pottstown with some of my High School friends. It felt so exotic. It is still there today. - **The Wall** - (Pottstown/Reading/King of Prussia, PA) The place that offered the lifetime guarantee stickers, and charged you 18 bucks for a CD in the mid-90s. I remember listening to new releases on their headphone listening stations, but I only bought a handful of albums there in my lifetime. I'll always be able to know which ones those are via those little blue stickers. - **Tower** (King of Prussia, PA) - I'll always vividly remember my first visit to the King of Prussia location. They had a copy of pretty much every album I was aware of. They had the entire catalog of artists. They had entire rooms dedicated to Jazz and Classical music. It was always a treat when I got to visit this place, and I would return with a stack of new disks. I remember seeing all of the Paul McCartney solo albums I had seen in the liner notes to *All The Best* and thinking about how long it would take to come back and own them all. - **Best Buy** - (Reading/Allentown, PA) In the mid 90s, this place felt a bit like Tower, but way cheaper. When the location opened in Wyomissing, it became the location where I bought 90% of the things I couldn't get at Circuit City. - **Sam Goody** (Pottstown/Reading, PA) - The last mall record store standing in SE PA would become an occasional visit when I wanted an obscure new release, like the latest **Tori Amos** CD single. - **Borders** (Reading, PA) - Oh man, I miss this place. It was perhaps the coolest chain store that ever was. An amazing collection of Books, Movies, and Music it was a place for nerdy teenagers (like me) to hang out in the late 90s. Boarders introduce me to imported CD releases. Boarders introduced me to classical music with the selections they played over the store speakers, and their recommended recordings helped me build my initial collection.They were a physical manifestation of the Amazon selection, it was too beautiful to live into our modern age. - **Record Revolution** (Reading, PA) - My first visit was to buy a **Tori Amos** bootleg. The unique vibe of the place would bring me back on multiple occasions before they closed early in the next millennium. They put the idea in my head of returning to vinyl records. It would take a decade before I actually started on that journey, but it started here in 1998. - **Cash Converters** (Pottstown, PA) - The used CD era kicked into high gear in the late 90s. This local second-hand sale chain had some of the best deals for used discs. It was an especially good deal when they ran there regular buy 2 get 1 free deals. I bought dozens of albums there for 2-3 bucks each.